Auctioned to the Dragon

by Kayle Wolf

  He wasn’t ready for the way her eyes widened to the size of dinner plates—or the whoop of joy that she let out, the sound echoing through the forest in a way that would’ve made him worry about their pursuers if they hadn’t run so hard and fast the day before. “A bear! What? I didn’t know there were bears!”

  “You didn’t—know?”

  “Show me!” She was on her feet, almost vibrating with energy, her face alive with joy. Art was completely taken aback. As long as he’d lived, he’d never expected anyone on earth to respond this way to finding out what he was. “Show me the bear!” She must have read something in the expression on his face because the energy in her seemed to drop a little. “No?”

  “Like I said. Dangerous.” How did you explain centuries of fairly awful history to someone who didn’t know the first thing about it? Noah would have known what to say, he thought, and the grief hit him like a blow to the chest. Too much focus on keeping his feelings about Helena at bay. He’d eased up on the wall he was keeping between him and his sadness. How long before he snapped like a twig under the force of all this? He should have killed Val when he had the chance.

  “Dangerous how?” She moved closer to him, her eyes curious, tender. “If you don’t want to talk about it, I’ll stop asking. But—my family are mountain dragons. We’ve been holed up in our stupid remote little settlement for hundreds of years. We almost died out completely a couple of years ago. We didn’t even realize there were other dragons until… well, until this festival.”

  That did explain a lot, he had to admit. Mountain dragons. No wonder she seemed so—well, so sheltered. But how did he explain his people to her with no frame of reference? He looked at her eyes, bright and searching. He owed it to her to try.

  “Bears—aren’t like other shifters. Wolves are born human and start shifting when they’re around thirteen. And dragons are born dragon and learn how to shift later, right?” She nodded in agreement. He took a breath. “We’re born human. We don’t just—learn how to shift. It’s a defense mechanism, for us. We only shift under extreme emotional pressure. My—my father used to say there were probably lots of bears who never figured out they could shift because they never snapped like we did. But when we snap… it’s catastrophic. No control. Some bears… a lot of bears never come back from it.”

  She was staring at him, lost for words. He was aware he’d not spoken this much in one go since before the deaths of his family. But he had to continue. It felt oddly cathartic, telling this side of the story to someone who didn’t know the usual narrative around bears—the narrative that said they were dangerous, mindless vermin, that any gathering of bears ought to be destroyed, that there was no way for bears to live peacefully together, or to control their animal urges.

  “When I snapped, I was ten. It was …” He took a deep breath. There was a lot of work underpinning his ability to tell this particular story. “It was my mother. We were driving home from soccer practice. Someone slammed into our car and sent us off the road. I was safe, I got out, but she… she wasn’t. The driver of the other car pulled over.” He took another breath, in through his nose, out through his mouth. “The guy was drunk. Absolutely plastered. He just stood there as my mother screamed for help. Just stood there. And I just felt this helplessness, this rage rise up inside me like a fire. And before I knew it, it filled my whole body, my arms and my legs, and suddenly I was eight feet tall and growing, and I’d never felt so powerful in all my life.” He shut his eyes. “I killed the drunk guy. Crushed his car. Ran off into the woods. The news called it a freak bear attack, blamed my mom’s death on me as well. There were hunters working those woods for weeks trying to find me. Good thing I had the sense to run.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Helena breathed.

  “I wasn’t,” he said. “I didn’t know anything. I was pure, dumb animal instinct for three days until Noah found me.”

  “Noah?”

  “My father.” A lump rose in his throat. “Adopted father. He and his sister Nell took in people like us. Bears who’d snapped, bears with nowhere to go.” This was harder, this was much harder than talking about his mom. That death he’d worked through—that death he had reconciled. This one, not so much. “Once we snap the first time, it’s much easier to bring it on again. So we stayed with Noah. He taught us how to control it.”

  “Your breathing. Meditation.”

  “Yes.” He breathed in—then smiled a little, realizing what he’d done. “Big part of it.”

  “I had no idea,” she said, looking at him seriously. “I’m so sorry, Arthur.”

  “Art.”

  “Hm?”

  “My—my family call me Art.” Why was he using the present tense? Because if he used the past tense, she’d ask why, and he’d have to explain their deaths, and he couldn’t handle that right now. Not yet. “You can too.”

  “Art.” She smiled, and in an unexpected gesture that sent his heart leaping into his throat, she took his hand in hers. It was warm, soft, and strong, and he fought down about a thousand impulses in favor of gently returning the pressure. “Thank you for—sharing that, with me. About your people.”

  “We’re not a popular bunch,” he said, trying to distract himself from the feeling of her hand in his. “Most shifters see us as—dumb monsters.”

  “But you’re not,” Helena said blankly—and that complete dismissal of the ancient grudge against his people made him feel dangerously close to tears. “You—you keep yourselves safe when you’re threatened. That’s all. And you’re far from dumb, Arthur. Art.”

  “Kind of you to say,” he murmured—and for a moment they were quiet, her looking up at him in the cool forest air, her thumb tracing electrifying patterns on the back of his hand. So close that he could see each individual eyelash that framed those toffee-colored eyes of hers. It was like he could feel the whole outline of her body just from the warmth radiating from her.

  He broke away, clearing his throat, turning towards the path. “We ought to get going.”

  “Oh, sure. Long walk ahead.” There was something in her voice—he tried not to notice, but he couldn’t help it. Disappointment. There had been something in the air between them, and she’d been disappointed when he turned away. Art sunk his awareness, his mind, his whole spirit into the simple act of walking—but no matter how hard he worked or how precisely he focused, for the life of him he couldn’t shake that giddy feeling in his chest.

  Chapter 9

  Helena couldn’t believe she was out in the woods with a bear. They were walking in silence, and she respected his space, respected his need for a bit of peace, but her mind was thrumming with about a thousand more questions she wanted to ask. What kind of bear was he? Grizzly? Brown? A native species, or a European one? If there were bear shifters, then were there other animals too, as Angela had suspected? The main pattern she could observe was that every shifter she’d met was a predator. Wolves, dragons, bears… hawks? Cougars? Shark shifters, like mermaids? The mermaid myth had to come from somewhere, right? Lord knew the stories humans told about dragons had come from myths.

  It felt good to have a belly full of food again. And it felt good to have talked a little with Arthur—with Art, she corrected herself with a fond little smile. He’d trusted her. He’d opened up. She’d been patient like she’d always been with her brother when he seemed moody, and she’d waited carefully, and she hadn’t made the old mistake of asking him a hundred thousand questions. She did regret how excited she’d gotten about his nature, though. That had been a misstep. No wonder he’d looked so shocked by her enthusiasm if the rest of shifter society considered bears to be wild and savage. Well, it wasn’t as if her people were blameless in that. Until they’d met Angela and Jessica, her family hadn’t done much about the persistent rumor that wolves were savage, mindlessly obedient beasts ruled by the iron fist of their Alpha. If there was any stronger proof against that idea than her two sisters-in-law, she was yet to find it.

  She coul
d tell he was hiding something else from her too. She had a fair bit of intuition when it came to that kind of thing—a gift from her mother, perhaps, who’d always been able to tell when her children were lying or trying to keep something from her. Some things were just genetic. But unlike her mother, who had been an uncompromising woman at the best of times, Helena wasn’t going to press Art to reveal whatever it was he was holding back. He’d trusted her enough to tell her about his people, about bears and how they were considered by shifter society more broadly, and she could tell that it was hurtful subject matter, that it was difficult for him to talk about. So if he could trust her that much, a woman he’d only just met, a woman who belonged to a species that had historically treated his pretty badly… well, she could trust him enough to let him keep the secrets he wanted to keep.

  Not that she wasn’t desperately curious, of course, but she’d been alive for a very long time, and it had taught her at least a little bit of patience.

  They walked all morning, and the silence between them had evolved from the uncomfortable, tense, resentful atmosphere that had marked their first day of travel together. That had been horrible. This felt warm, pleasant. They were silent not out of distrust for one another, but out of a mutual understanding that for the time being, there was nothing to be said. Besides, there was plenty to be enjoyed in the air around them, the cool forest air, the birdsong, and the rustling of creatures in the undergrowth. The collar was still chafing and bothering her, of course, and the fact that she was physically incapable of transforming ground on her nerves… but for the moment at least, she was happy to be human, down here under the canopy of trees. There was a lot that dragons missed from the sky.

  It was midday when they emerged from the forest onto what Helena took a moment to recognize as a road—a real, proper, cars-drive-on-it kind of road. Art paused too, looking up and down it with some satisfaction, then looked back over his shoulder at her.

  “If I remember right, there’s a little town just over this next hill. How’s your ankle?”

  “Better than my boots,” she admitted, lifting up one of her feet for his inspection. The sole of her boot was flapping off. “I don’t spend that much time on foot.”

  Sure enough, his sense of direction had been spot on. As they crested the rise, she was confronted rather abruptly with a fast-food restaurant. Strange, to come out of the untouched wilderness to such a shocking reminder of human civilization—she recognized it from Angela and Jessica’s television. They walked on. The plan was to get a hotel room for the evening, then go their separate ways the next day, once Helena had figured out where she was going to go from here. All she needed to do was get a good look at a map—from there, she’d figure out a way to hitch-hike back home. It would be a long journey—the preferable option, of course, would be to find someone who could get the collar off her. Then it would be no journey at all—just beating her wings. And what a story she’d have to tell her family!

  Where would Art go, though? There was something in the set of his face that made her worry about him, just a little. He didn’t seem like a man with a plan for the future. But she couldn’t figure out a way to broach the subject.

  They stopped at a department store. Art tried to talk her into letting him buy her a new pair of boots, but she refused. He’d already done so much for her—and her boots didn’t need to last that much longer. They grabbed a tube of superglue to repair her boot, and—because Art caught her staring wistfully at them in an unguarded moment—a couple of blocks of chocolate. “I used to bring chocolate home for my little brother,” he told her, smiling a little sadly—and something in his eyes arrested her impulse to ask a hundred questions about that. She just put it away in the file. Little brother. That made sense, she thought, smiling up at him as he paid for their items. He seemed like a big brother.

  There was only one hotel in town, and it was more like a big bed and breakfast than a hotel. In place of a concierge, there was a friendly, twinkly old woman with a huge smile pottering about in the reception area. She gasped audibly as Helena and Art stepped through the door, Art having to bow his head to get under the door frame, and bustled over to them with a comic kind of energy. Helena had forgotten how tiny humans could be.

  “My, aren’t you two a striking couple!” she exclaimed. “Gosh, I bet your kids play basketball.”

  “We don’t—have kids,” Helena said, hesitantly, not sure how much to correct about what this woman had assumed about them. After all, what could they say about their connection? Oh, we’re not a couple, he actually just saved me from a bunch of dragons who were trying to sell me into sex slavery, and now we’re on the run! No, being a couple was a much better cover story. Art seemed to agree—he slipped his hand into hers, and she fought the urge to grin like an idiot.

  “Have you two been hiking? It’s beautiful this time of year. You’ll be wanting a room? Are your bags outside?”

  Bags. That was an interesting problem. Why on earth would two humans on a camping trip not have bags? Helena opened her mouth—but Art was quicker.

  “Funny story,” he said smoothly. “We parked our truck down the hill a way, thinking we’d have a look around—but then we hiked all the way here before we realized! Nothing essential in there, though. We figured we’d check in, rest up, then walk back to grab the truck later this afternoon.”

  The woman nodded, bustling over to check them in, and Helena followed Art to the desk, impressed with his quick thinking. She’d have never thought of mentioning a vehicle. The benefits of being a little more in touch with the real world, she thought, looking up at him fondly. She really was quite extraordinarily lucky to have found this man. Where would she be without him? Probably still plotting the murder of that white-eyed dragon who’d bought her, she thought with a shudder of fear. Not checking into an adorably cozy little room with a tall, dark, and handsome near-stranger…

  Oh. There was only one bed. The woman from the desk—who’d introduced herself as Betty—ushered them in then bustled away with a final stern instruction to let her know if they needed absolutely anything at all. Art was standing a little awkwardly in the middle of the room, and he cleared his throat in that way he had, gesturing to the bed.

  “I’m happy to sleep on the floor.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said, avoiding his gaze. “I’m worried about either of us fitting in it, honestly.”

  He grinned. “Humans are short. I always forget that. Don’t see them often.”

  “I live with one,” Helena said, thinking fondly of her sister-in-law. “She’s pretty tall for a human, though, I guess. She still complains about how little she feels next to my brothers and me.”

  He was sitting on the edge of the bed now and tilted his head, curiosity in those dark eyes. “You have brothers?”

  “Samuel and Alexander. They’re twins. I’m the baby,” she said smugly. “Lisa—the human—is Alexander’s wife. She’d be furious if she heard me calling her ‘the human,’” she added with a rueful grin.

  But Art was staring up at her like she’d said something insane. “A human and a dragon? Married?”

  “Yeah. Is that weird?” She shrugged. “My brother Samuel married a wolf. Our whole community gossiped about it for months on end, but we’re pretty isolated. I kind of thought—maybe the rest of shifter society might be a bit more forward-thinking about it all?”

  “Forward-thinking how?”

  “Well—tradition says dragons can only find their soulmates among dragons. Same with wolves, from what Jessica’s said. The idea of your mate being another species just… isn’t an option. But it’s kind of backwards, isn’t it? I mean, if my soulmate’s a dragon, why haven’t I met them yet? I’ve known everyone in the valley for hundreds of years.”

  “You think your soulmate is out there, somewhere?”

  “They must be, right? You’re meant to know the minute you meet them. And I went for centuries without—knowing anything. So.” She shrugged, suddenly feel
ing self-conscious about the direction the conversation had taken. “What about you? What about your soulmate?”

  He uttered a sharp little bark of laughter and averted his eyes from hers. “I’ve had other things on my mind, mostly.”

  “You never wondered about it?”

  “I did, and I didn’t. I mean—my brother Eric met his mate when we were nineteen. We literally found her in the woods in Wild form. He talked her back to human, and they never looked back. But the rest of us… no. Family was always more important.”

  “There’s still time,” she said softly. On impulse, she sat down beside him on the bed, feeling some need to comfort him though she couldn’t for the life of her explain what it was. Something in his eyes, in the way his voice caught, just a little, on his brother’s name. He looked up at her with such emptiness in those dark eyes that she almost recoiled.

  “That’s nice of you to say,” he said finally. “Truly.”

  “Well, what have we got if we haven’t got hope, right?” She wanted to ask—wanted desperately to ask why his face was so sad, why his carefully-controlled breathing was shuddering, just a little. She’d touched on something that was important to him, something that spoke to a huge amount of pain under the surface. But she wasn’t going to demand that he tell her something he wasn’t willing to share. That had been her mother’s way. It wasn’t going to be hers.

  She fought her disappointment when he broke eye contact, looked over to the window with its carefully arranged frame of rose-patterned curtains. “If you’d like to rest I’m happy to leave you alone for a while. I can go for a walk, pick us up some food—”

  He was getting to his feet, and with an impulse she wasn’t interested in interrogating, she caught him by the hand, pulled him back to the bed. Surprised, off-balance, he looked at her—and she saw, just for a second, before his surprise could give way to his usual guarded look, something of what he’d been trying to hide from her since they’d met. And that was enough. Before she could stop herself, before she could overthink it, she closed the space between them and pressed her lips to his.